Largo al factotum (Il barbiere di Siviglia)

Rossini signed the contract in December 1815 and delivered the score within weeks; the opera reached the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 20 February 1816 under the title Almaviva, ossia L'inutile precauzione, chosen out of deference to Paisiello, whose setting of Beaumarchais still held the stage. The first night collapsed into whistling and mishaps on stage. By the second performance the reception had reversed, and within a few seasons the work had displaced its predecessor across Europe. Its comic machinery — patter, crescendo, ensembles that accelerate towards chaos — became the model against which later Italian comedy was measured.